


Pangs of Conscience

by RKG



Category: Tangled (2010)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-09 12:37:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13481646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RKG/pseuds/RKG
Summary: What if there was a reason Varian went evil?





	Pangs of Conscience

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to do a post Secret of the Sundrop story where Cassandra goes to visit Varian in prison. Inspired by the fic "I know you're still in there" over on DA by Choco-Lottie. :) It was a good, sweet fic and I liked it.

" _Did I really lead the assault against a 14 year old kid_?" thought Cassandra, a few weeks later.

Of course, it wasn't like she'd had a choice. He had kidnapped the Queen and didn't back down, and committed treason on top of that. However, she couldn't help but feel a little sorry for the kid. He had just lost his Dad, and he just seemed more than a little mixed up.

"He's not eating." she overheard Pete say to Stan.

"Who's not eating?"

she asked.

"The new kid." said Pete. "He won't eat and he's just kind of sitting there staring out the window."

"Yeah, it's.. kinda sad." said Stan.

"Can I see him?"

"Go ahead, but he won't eat."

Cassandra shrugged and went down to the dungeon anyway. It didn't take her long to find Varian's cell, it was the only one without hooligans rattling the bars.

"Varian...?"

He was sitting indian style on the floor, looking up, out the window. 

"Hey, Varian--"

"Stay away from me, Cassandra." he muttered, his voice thick with emotion. "I'm dangerous."

"Without your giant death-bot, you couldn't take me in a fight." she pointed out. 

"Who's to say I don't still have it?" he pouted.

Cassandra laughed. "C'mon kid, be realistic. Giant death bots aren't allowed in the dungeons, and I would've seen it come in."

"I'm still dangerous."

"Technically, yes." said Cassandra, pulling up a chair. "Look, kid, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry about your--"

He shook his head. "I don't blame _you_ , Cassandra. You were just following orders."

"You kidnapped the Queen, kid. You don't see anything wrong with that?"

"Of course I know it's wrong!" he snapped. "I... I just... I couldn't make them hear me otherwise!"

"Did you try?"

"Yes, I tried, and if Rapunzel had come when Dad was first being encased, then none of this would've happened!" he yelled.

"But... she couldn't do anything, you saw that yourself."

"It would've been different had she come at the time." he maintained through gritted teeth. "We could've found a way to get him out!"

"Varian, you tried using her hair, it didn't work!"

"I didn't get to try everything I wanted." he growled. "There were other experiments, other..." he trailed off, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter now."

"Kid, I'm sorry--"

"Will you not call me that?!" he cried. "Everyone thinks I'm a child--I'm NOT!"

" _Certainly not anymore_." thought Cassandra, the youth in front of her certainly didn't look like a child anymore. The angry expression, the dark bags under his eyes, the wild state his hair was in, no, he definitely looked more like the mad scientist/wizard he'd always been portrayed as.

Suddenly he began to cough, not a simple, dry cough but a deep, barking cough. The kind of cough you only got when you'd been exposed to extreme cold.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

He leaned on the dungeon wall. "I'll be fine." he managed to choke out before launching into another coughing fit.

But he wasn't fine, she knew that sometimes the dungeon could be a place of communicable disease, and if he wasn't eating then he would have no way of fighting off anything that the dungeon inhabitants had to offer.

"Why aren't you eating?" she asked.

"Not hungry." he insisted.

"Varian, if you don't eat and get sick, then you won't--"

"I won't what? Get better? Isn't that the point?"

"The King wants to get you help--"

"HANG THE KING!" roared Varian. "If I don't want to be here anymore, then it should be my own choice! That way I'll finally be out of the way like everyone wants!"

Cassandra looked stricken. Perhaps this jail sentence hadn't been the thing Varian needed after all. She wasn't one to question the King, but this time she definitely wondered if it would be wise. 

"No one wants you dead, Varian."

"Why not?" he whispered, swaying on his feet. "Give me one good reason."

"Because believe it or not, we're still you're friends!" 

"Yeah right." replied Varian, slowly turning his back to her. She watched has he took a vial out of his pocket and turned it up as if to drink it.

"Varian, what're you doing?"

"None of your business!" he spat.

Cassandra grabbed the keys to the cell and opened the door. She half expected him to rush her, but instead what she saw worried her more, he stood there, trembling, glaring balefully at her as she entered the cell, grasping the vial as if his life depended on it.

"Stay. away. from me. Cassandra." he growled.

Paying no heed she crossed the space between them and drew her sword. "Tell me what you did, _kid_."

Varian backed into the wall, sword at his throat, he wanted to be brave, he wanted to tell her exactly where to go, but his courage had run out, and he didn't have any more until he could get back to his lab.

She watched as he broke into a sweat, but didn't let up.

"And just for the record, I'm not going to kill you. But I have no qualms about poking holes in you until you tell me what you did!" she emphasized her point by putting the sword's tip at his chest. "So we can do this the easy way, or you can tell me where to start."

She expected him to break, but maybe not quite so spectacularly as this. He slowly slid to the floor, folding in on himself, it seemed he suddenly realized the gravity of just where he was and what he had done.

"Tell me, kid!" Cassandra bore down. 

Varian shook his head in a last show of defiance.

Cassandra shoved her sword into a crumbling brick behind him. "Then where do you want me to start?"

He could feel his emotions becoming unwound, every sad, hopeless, frightened feeling that he had managed to suppress these past few months were rushing to the surface and now he had no liquid facade to hide behind, nothing telling him that he shouldn't care, that he shoulShed just keep working. Now he was face to face with a woman he'd actively tried to kill... all for a means to an end.

She watched as his head sank to his knees and he began to shake violently.

"Varian..."

"I h-had to..." he sobbed in a strangled voice. "I h-had to take the potion to be able to..."

Cassandra blinked. "Potion?"

She noticed the vial in his hand, it was the same flakken that Rapunzel had spoken of that had belonged to Xavier.

"You took the mood modifying potion?!" she cried.

"I HAD TO!" he cried. "I had to b-because o-otherwise..." he shook violently as another sob rippled through him. "I.. I couldn't stop... couldn't stop crying... couldn't stop failing..."

"Kid, that stuff is dangerous!"

"You think I don't know that?! I had to do s-something, Cassandra! D-Dad... a-always hated it when I cried..."

Cassandra knelt in front of him. "Varian... it's not wrong to cry over someone you love."

And cry he did...


End file.
